perfection
by Hinotorihime
Summary: Hey boy, hey you little soldier, where are you going with your dark eyes all aflame? If the dawn is your lover, what does that make me? [RusLith]


**the two songs used in the fic are the well-known russian/ukranian song "** **очи чёрные** **", or "dark eyes", and a lithuanian song called "bernužėli kareivėli". the verse lithuania sings translates as "hey boy, hey you little soldier, who's your sweetheart? high above the clouds is a brilliant sunrise; that's my sweetheart." it's a lovely song; I highly recommend the version sung by GYVATA.**

 **nekalbu rusiškai: "I don't speak Russian". (tolys u liar.)**

 **this is so self-indulgent, I swear xD**

* * *

You're shambling up the stairs, big feet careful and noiseless on the carpeted steps, when you hear the music. You recognize the voice immediately, and then you can place the language. It isn't yours.

"Bernužėli kareivėli, kur tavo mergelė?"

You imagine him sitting on the end of the bed, stroking his brother's hair as he sings, soft and distant with gentle touches.

"Aukštai danguje šviesi aušra—"

You could go in and stop him. You should.

"Are you crazy, Tolvydas?" Belarus's anger is tinged with nervousness; she's looking around for the bugs and it's seeping into her voice. "Sing in Russian or not at all, it's not that hard to understand."

"Nekalbu rusiškai," Lithuania retorts. The rustle of the bedspread, as he stands up belligerently. He must be moving as he always does, abrupt, purposeful, hands balled into fists and dark eyes afire.

"Shut up, shut _up_!" screeches Natalya, and there's a squeak of fear from Latvia, and a thud, and someone hissing in a breath of pain.

"Will you two just— _stop it_?" Irina cries.

Something hard and sad settles into your stomach and you keep moving. Families aren't supposed to fight, you think. It must be the snow; they're all tense and wound-up from being stuck inside all the time. That's it. Tolys will apologize, later, and Tasha will hmph an acceptance carefully hidden in a threat, and everything will be perfect again.

You duck into your bedroom. The sun's long down, colours faded from the sky. (There were brilliant dawns, once, and vibrant twilights, when you were young. You wonder what happened to them.)

The walls are thin in this house. You can hear your sister singing; it's Ochi Chyornye, probably the first tune that came into her head, soft in her scratchy alto. _Dark eyes, passionate eyes_ —you hum along— _such burning and beautiful eyes_ —you pull the blankets down to the foot of the bed to leave the sheets exposed, clean and clean-smelling for all they're vaguely yellow-grey from years of washing.

 _I love you as I fear you, oh, it was an unlucky hour when we met…_

You pull your boots off, slow and tired; shrug off your coat, fold it neatly on the back of the chair. Someone's already lit the stove, and the air is warm enough.

(Your bones are still frozen, but you're used to that.)

Tuck your bare feet up under your hips and lean your head against the cheerful yellow wallpaper, eyelids drooping as you scan the pages of your book. You keep rereading sentences, over and over. The main character is a rather silly girl who really doesn't deserve her young man (tall, dark-haired and strong and kind and far too willing to go along with her foolishness) but they appear to be kissing, right now, and the words imprint themselves on the insides of your eyelids and send little tingling thrills through you.

(One wish.)

A soft knock on the door and you place the book carefully on the nightstand.

"Come in," you say, and "dorogoy," and feel the ill-fit of the endearment on your tongue.

Lithuania shuts the door quietly behind him and comes over to the bed where you sit. Wordlessly, he slides onto your lap facing you, so that his knees straddle your hips, and you feel his thin fingers carding through your hair.

"You're shaking," you say in mild surprise.

"I'm cold," he murmurs. He's always cold, you think. It's always cold, here.

"Should we fix that?" Your voice is teasing, but his face remains solemn and absent. Lips tight and thin and twisted, slashing scar-white across his brunet skin, as he leans up and forward.

His mouth seals over yours like the lid of a bottle, warm from the sterilizing bath.

There's red staining his cheeks, painted across like streaks of sunlight against the evening sky, and his shoulders are set at aching attention. Does he know? It seems to be his default stance, these days, even when he's sitting down. Tense. Ready to run. You think of foxholes and gunpowder (of dragging him kicking and biting out of the trees) (but he came, eventually, head high and haughty, and two months later he was curled against your bare stomach saying everything you always wanted to hear).

Slide your hands around his waist and let your lashes flutter part-closed, his chest pressed against yours small and thin and all-bones digging into your lungs.

(You fell through the ice once and drowned, your third or fourth death black and heavy, choking, frozen water squeezing a corset around your ribs. Sometimes, when it's after and he's tucked skin-to-skin asleep against you, you'll try to convince yourself it's not the same.)

His lukewarm palms come slow and limp down your neck and spine, slip under and around, nails curling in the hair of your chest where your shirt's open and he's not looking at you, he's staring somewhere over your shoulder, abstracted like the hard edges of snow.

 _ _—_ Would you miss me, Tolusha? Would you miss me if you left?_

There's a terrible blankness in his dark eyes. Hate or fear or worst, resignation. And you didn't want it to be like this but it's better than nothing, better than pining and punishing from loneliness (keep the troublemakers close, you lied to your boss, and he's part of your family now, and _he should be grateful,_ it's better than torture than sending him to freeze and starve isn't it? isn't it?) he came to you, not you to him, and you'd let yourself hope those few blissful years, back when his presence in your bed was comforting instead of just another kind of alone.

He's cold. So cold. Always cold.

 _ _—__ ** _When_** _I leave, I'm not looking back._

Your hands tighten around his shoulders and suddenly you feel something wet on your fingertips and he gasps almost inaudibly.

"Ivan," he says. "Ivan, you're hurting me."

 _Ivan_ , you grip tighter because it's always _Ivan_. You can't remember a time he's ever used the short form of your name.

"Russia, let _go_!"

He yanks at your hands and finally pulls away, breathing heavily. Eight neat little crescents mark his bare upper arms in brilliant poisonous scarlet. There's blood under your fingernails.

"I'm going to bed," he whispers, and stands, abruptly, purposefully.

"Tolusha," you try.

He turns at the door and smiles sadly at you. "Good night, sir."

Let him go, him and his sterile, clinical kisses.

Your heart hurts.

You press a hand to your chest, push and push until purple blooms on your skin and your ribs feel about to give way, and it was his eyes you fell in love with. He was taller than you, once, and his dark eyes lit with a kindness and affection that you wanted nothing more than to have turned on you instead of his rotund, limping puppy. They blazed with fight when you found him again, when you brought him home, away from the one who had stolen him all those centuries ago (but maybe he didn't see it that way, from the way he spat at you and tried to squirm from your grip. Not at first, but you thought, you believed, he said, that boy's beloved commonwealth didn't matter anymore. You thought _(but part of you knows he's never said)_ he was _yours_.)

His eyes haunt you.

 _Dark eyes, passionate eyes,_ like the undergrowth of a forest, the brown-and-green growing things of the shortlived summer, _I love you as I fear you_ and you're so afraid. You can't afford to be afraid but he's _leaving_ you and soon you will have _nothing_ and it's a different type of loneliness, having him in your bed, but it's so much better than nothing and it's not fair.

It's not _fair_.

You let the yell bubble up in your throat and rake your hand down the wall, rip the rumpled sheets from the bed, throw the book on the nightstand across the room. It lands facing down, pages crumpled. Your bloody fingers leave brown streaks on the edges of the curling wallpaper.


End file.
